Which corner of the China Zodiac looks like the number 8?
The ancients regarded sheep as "virtuous animals", being kind to others, being kind and courteous. Good sheep, sheep like to live in groups. Kindness means that sheep are kind and have horns but are not good at fighting. Death means that the sheep are quiet when they are slaughtered, so there is the story of "sheep for cattle" in Wang Xuan. Courtesy is the sheep's gratitude, and the sheep's kneeling milk symbolizes filial piety.
Shuo Wen Jie Zi says, "Beauty is sweet, from sheep, from big" and "sheep is great beauty". Li Xiaoding, a philologist, interpreted "beauty" as "the shape of a suspected elephant decorating a sheep's head" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions's annotation. Whatever the explanation, there is no doubt that sheep is a symbol of beauty.
"Zhouyi Taigua" takes October as the complex divination, and one yang is born in the next; December is Linbu, Eryang is born in the next, the first month is Taibu, and Sanyang is born in the next. When winter goes and spring comes, the yin disappears and the yang grows. At the beginning of the year, "Three Yang Kai Tai" was used to express good luck and peace, and the folk changed it to "Three Yang Kai Tai". In the New Year pictures, three big sheep were depicted by paper-cutting to pray for the peace of the country and the people.
Health maintenance
From a cultural point of view, the key to the occurrence of human civilization is the invention of plant cultivation and animal feeding. If human beings can't grow plants and keep animals, they will always be in the primitive stage of fishing and hunting, and civilization will not come into being.
The transition from predatory fishing and hunting production to productive agriculture and animal husbandry production is a great revolution of human society. This great revolution has brought great changes to human society, and the lifestyle has also begun to transition from vagrants to settlers, thus gradually bidding farewell to the instinctive production activities and lifestyles left over from the animal kingdom.
The myth of "Five Sheep Holding the Valley" is said to have happened in the Zhou Dynasty, when China began to enter a civilized society and animal husbandry was very developed. The entry of the Chinese nation into a civilized society cannot be separated from the material foundation. In China, firstly, the development of animal husbandry domesticated sheep at the earliest time, thus solving the problems of hunger and good food for our ancestors. From eating fish to eating sheep, it is the material embodiment of the progress of Chinese food civilization.
Therefore, sheep are the most important to the activities and life of the ancestors of the Yellow Emperor. From the time of fishing and hunting, when wild animals were the main food source, to knowing how to adopt, with the accumulation of prey entering the animal husbandry period, food was preserved.
"Livestock" is the beginning of food accumulation, and five animals become the staple food of health food, among which sheep is the main food, so "sheep" becomes the "food" of "nurturing" life, and "eating" and "sheep" constitute "nurturing"; "Kindness" (associated with food in ancient times) means having sheep in your mouth, and "eating" means eating sheep to fill your stomach. Judging from the "month", it shows that the staple food at that time was meat.